The The Clash - London Calling - Scrapbook Hardcover – November 15, 2019

Everything was great! Love this album.

You'd have to have a hard heart to deny Joe's ex and Mick and Paul one last payday. I remember buying this record in September of 1980; two records for a list price of $7.98, a year later they'd release Sandinista (three LPs!) and list it at $9.98. This at the same time that Columbia was asking $11.98 for Bruce Springsteen's two-LP The River and $14.98 for The Wall. Joe always had a keen sense of the thin wallets in the pockets of his fan base.I remember bringing this record back to my dorm (fall of my freshman year) and dropping the needle on Side 1. It didn't matter who you played it for -- skinny-tie new wavers, heavy metal freaks (this was the year of AC/DC), Jefferson Starship fans, CSN fans -- no one could deny the genius of it. I wore out all four sides in this order -- Side 1, Side 3 (Elevator! Goin up!), Side 4, Side 2. These days you can have all 4 sides (no flipping, no wear!) for $10.98. It's still the best bargain in rock history.Or you can have this thing for $26.98 (hey! down to $24.98!). There's nothing essential on the Vanilla Tapes, though I'm still glad to own it. The DVD, like all such "making-of" endeavors, is best avoided. The full-size fold-out lyric sheet is welcome. Whoever decided to illustrate the broadside interior and several pages of the booklet with generic 50s "sock-hop" clip-art should meet the same fate as the Card Cheat. But all in all, it's a generous tribute to a band that was once "the only band that matters."

I have always loved this album from wax to silver. This just happens to be a sort of Deluxe Edition with an extra disc of music of which most are demos. That's really good as I was hoping for a Clash Double Disc. But wait,there is also a third disc which happens to be a DVD. Nice!!!! The music on disc two, however, is a really good set of nice music and demos. The DVD I caught in spurts but, will view it again at a later time. At the moment I really did not watch much to get an opinion. But the album and expansion disc are really fantastic. I'm back adding an update here on June 24th 2017 from this original article review from May 1st 2016. I see they have changed the title from The Legacy Edition to the 25th Anniversary Edition. All tracks on both discs are still the same, including the DVD segments but the front cover has changed along the left vertical it used to say 25th Anniversary Legacy Edition to just 25th Anniversary Edition. WHY? If everything else remained the same then why chabge the title? That's STRANGE! Well anyeay, this is a great 3 disc set and you shouldn'rt miss out.

Great package: incredible songs that are just as powerful and brilliant as they were when Margaret Thatcher ruled (meant as a pejorative not an accolade). The extras are added dimension for the brain and pleasure for the ear and eye. I use to think that the album was the punk/post-punk equivalent of the Stones' "Exile On Main Street," eclectic, multi-dimensional, and a blast. I now think "London Calling" is the greater bomb.

My son loved it

Disc One: The Original LP Hands down, The Clash's "London Calling" is one of the strongest albums in rock history. Despite being a punk rock group, The Clash explored reggae, ska, jazz, pop with strong melodies with equally as strong lyrics. Throughout the album's 19 tracks, it is never boring and is essential in anyone's record collection.Disc Two: The Vanilla Tapes The demos from the "London Calling" sessions are very interesting but it is by no means something one just sits back and listens to. The sound quality is poor, and the songs are not quite in the form that they would take on later. The most intresting is the cover of Bob Dylan's "The Man in Me". It would have been interesting to hear a better cut of that song. Interesting listening for fans but newcomers might not welcome it as much.DVD: The Last Testament There is some cool videos on the DVD of "Train in Vain", "London Calling" and "Clampdown" but the documentary itself really kind of drags. Listening to the album take form on disc 2 is interesting but nothing is really learned in the documentary. Plays a lot like a "Behind the Music" episode but not nearly as in depth. Pretty much just an added bonus.FINAL REVIEW: As I mentioned, "London Calling" is a must have. A Five Star classic that ranks among the greatest albums of all time. Not having this is like not having "Sgt. Pepper" or "Kind of Blue". The album in its new extended package is excessive and for die hard fans. The demos are interesting but nothing to listen to repeatedly and the DVD is a throw away. Not a waste of money but if you own the original remastered CD, that should suffice.

Great album. Great band. Great vinyl.

this is the greatest record ever made the dvd is nice and the bonus disc are ok it sounds like my band trying to play the clash but london calling is the shiznit as far as late 70's punk goes there is not a bad song on here and more than a few that should have been singles if the record company would have know how to market this band this is one of those if i was stranded on a desert island and could only take 10 cd's this would be my first choice

250 ème édition... Pris la main dans le sac... Pas moyen d'y échapper encore une fois !!!! Super son ! Très heureux d'être vivant et vieux pour en remonter aux gamins les blaireaux. Très beau coffret comme toujours. Une pièce de collect'!

Cuando se hizo este disco era una época en la que la creatividad musical era patente en cientos de artistas de todos los estilos. Esta Gran Obra es parte de esa historia musical. La remasterización gana un poco de calidad con respecto a otros C.D,s editados anteriormente. El disco 1, es la grabación original. El 2º parecen grabaciones de ensayos algunas de poca calidad musical y el 3º es un DVD. La presentación es soberbia y trae hasta un libreto con fotos y texto (en ingles). Creo que es un disco que no puede faltar en la colección de un buen melomano pues todas las canciones son buenas como no podía ser menos. Distrutarlo

Descubri a The Clash por Los Fabulosos Cadillacs con su version de Guns of Brixton, y bueno escuchar este disco es sumergirte en mas de una hora de estupendas canciones, el pico de creatividad de The Clash no solo Joe strummer era EL grupo, porbando con otros ritmos estilos, unos capos isn duda , uno delos mejores de todos los tiempos...

ディスク2のヴァニラテープ(リハ音源)が素晴らしいです。音質は最悪だけど、名曲たちの原型を聴いているようで素晴らしく幸せな気持ちになれます。ただ、クラッシュを聴き尽くした人が聴くべき物なので初心者にはお勧めしません。一枚組の通常盤ロンドンコーリングで充分だと思います。

The Clash were perhaps the very embodiment of true punk, with a far higher level of musical versatility than may have been evident to the casual observer at the time. Joe Strummer and Mick Jones made a formidable songwriting partnership, with both immediacy and depth, and assimilated a huge range of musical influences. They were one of the few collection of musicians without Jamaican origins who could successfully play reggae, or their own punkish re-modelling of reggae, without sounding like an insipid imitation. As well as their own reggae or rasta-inspired Rudie Can't Fail and Jimmy Jazz, its influence is throughout and there are two reggae tunes, Danny Ray's Get Up (as Revolution Rock) and the Rulers' Wrong 'Em Boyo, which begins with a snatch of Johnny Otis' Staggerlee And Billy, just as the Rulers version did.They also cover Vince Taylor's rockabilly classic Brand New Cadillac. When Joe Strummer later sang with the Pogues in place of the ailing Shane MacGowan, it made perfect sense because of the impassioned folk-a-billy sensibilities also inherent in the Clash's music.The name London Calling comes from the call sign of the BBC's 2LO radio news bulletin, dating from 1922, and is apposite as the band send their own front-line bulletins around the globe half-a-century later. The call sign was retained by the World Service, for whom Joe Strummer was later to present record programmes right up to his untimely death.The title song was a single in the UK, though in the USA it became the flip of Train In Vain (Stand By Me). Astonishingly, the dazzling Train In Vain was originally written and recorded to be a free cover-mounted single for the New Musical Express, and appeared on the album as a last-minute undocumented extra track when that didn't happen.The double-album London Calling is an enduring masterpiece, though some of its sonic subtleties were lost in the original vinyl mastering, and far from being locked in a seventies time warp, the record sounds valid and meaningful today.The original re-mastered CD rectified many of the vinyl shortcomings, bringing out parts of the musical palette that had previously sounded dull, and this new re-master is at least its equal, and often superior. It also sounds leaner, as the 3-second pauses between the tracks have been excised, hence the abbreviated running time.The Vanilla tapes are demos recorded at a rehearsal studio in Pimlico, made in the final month before album recording proper got underway at Wessex in July 1979. Believed lost for many years they acquired legendary status, partly because Joe Strummer had at one time intimated that the demos might actually become the album, though this was mostly gamesmanship with the record label, as the sound quality is not of a releasable quality for that purpose. It is are a fascinating document of a series of songs in development, though; valuable to those with a serious interest in the band. I imagine it is disc one that will find its way back to my CD tray most frequently, but it is of course nice to have, along with the booklet, a facsimile of the original album insert and a bonus DVD, in a well presented package